About two weeks ago we looked at a press release touting an effort to celebrate LGBT history in various publications. I found it striking for the number of unsubstantiated assertions it contained.

Now, from the dark recesses of a Google News feed, comes Victoria Brownworth’s creation of a surprisingly gay-friendly George Washington. Personally, I’m not buying it, because I think she jumps to some unwarranted conclusions, but since it’s an interesting foray into historical matters I thought we might analyze it in some detail.

Washington’s letters state that he was less than thrilled with marital life (“not much fire between the sheets”) and preferred the company of men — particularly the young Alexander Hamilton, who he made his personal secretary — to that of women, as his letters attest. His concern for his male colleagues clearly extended to their personal lives. This was especially true of Hamilton, who he brought with him to Valley Forge, giving Hamilton a cabin to share with his then-lover, John Laurens, to whom Hamilton had written passionate love letters which are still extant.

First of all, if dissatisfaction with married life and a preference for hanging out with the fellas means you’re tolerant of gays, then I think we can safely say that 99.999% of American men are homophobia-free.

As for the stuff about Hamilton and Laurens, it’s hard for me to take it too seriously. It’s true that Hamilton and Laurens were very close, and that Hamilton’s letters to Laurens are incredibly affectionate and emotional. Ron Chernow briefly discussed the intense and intimate nature of their correspondence in his biography of Hamilton. But to state that Hamilton and Laurens were “lovers” is to commit the same historical fallacy that we saw in the article about Baron von Steuben. The writer takes what is at best a dubious bit of theorizing and presents it as an outright fact.

Alexander Hamilton depicted as a young officer of the Continental Army. Painting by Alonzo Chappel, via Wikimedia Commons

For the life of me, I can’t understand why so many observers are unable to get their heads around the fact that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, intimate friends of the same sex would express intense emotions in their correspondence without having an actual romantic relationship. It goes back to a point I keep laboring over and over—namely, that people who lived a long time ago were different from us. For Hamilton to write Laurens that he wanted “to convince you that I love you,” as he put it on one occasion, didn’t necessarily have the same connotations that it has for us today. In fact, the Marquis de Lafayette referred to Hamilton as a “man whom I love very much and about whom I have occasionally spoken to you” in a letter to his own wife. If these terms of affection denoted a sexual attraction, why in the world were these guys writing to their wives about it? (“Guess what, honey? I’ve got the hots for another man! I knew you’d be happy for me.”)

Even more damning is the indisputable fact that Hamilton was an accomplished skirt-chaser. It was precisely his inability to stay out of the undergarments of other men’s wives that got him into such trouble later in life, when the husband of his mistress blackmailed him and the whole thing blew up in public.

Hamilton also enjoyed an affectionate marriage. Although he slept around behind his wife’s back, the two were close, and he managed to get her knocked up no less than eight times. If Hamilton had a thing for guys, he apparently got over it. (Laurens got married in England and fathered a child, but he sailed for America not long after the wedding and then died in the war without getting the chance to see his daughter.)

Moving on:

Renowned gay historian Randy Shilts makes the case for Washington’s ever-pragmatic as well as compassionate approach to same-sex relationships in Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military.

Shilts details how Washington merely signed the order for discharge of a soldier caught in flagrante with another soldier, and suggests that if Lt. Col. Aaron Burr had not forced the issue, the soldier might have remained at Valley Forge instead of being the first documented case of a discharge for homosexuality in the Continental Army on March 15, 1778 at Valley Forge.

The soldier was court-martialed by Burr, but that was the extent of it. Washington did not flog him, imprison him or as Jefferson had required as part of Virginia law as punishment for sodomy, have him castrated. Washington could also have had the soldier executed. He did none of these things. The soldier just walked away.

He didn’t exactly “just walk away,” though; he got drummed out of camp, which is not at all the same as a simple discharge. This was a humiliating punishment in which the condemned was publicly marched out to music, formally stripped of rank, and exiled from the camp. In an age when gentlemen jealously guarded their honor and reputations, this was no small matter. Brownworth goes on to describe the ritual of drumming out, but doesn’t seem to understand its significance.

Randy Shilts did indeed discuss the Enslin case in Conduct Unbecoming, but he was far more cautious in drawing conclusions from it than Brownworth indicates. Here’s an excerpt from his book:

Some observers have suggested that Enslin’s sentence is evidence that Washington held a lenient view of homosexuality, since such transgression could have been punishable by imprisonment or even death in the conventions of the day. (Thomas Jefferson demonstrated his liberalism by proposing a year earlier that sodomy be punished by castration instead of death in the new penal code that would replace Virginia’s Colonial charter.) This, however, remains speculation. [Emphasis added.]

Brownworth’s contention that Washington would’ve let the whole thing slide had not Burr “forced the issue” is also rather specious. Signing off on the sentence was about all that Washington, as commanding general of the army, would be expected to do. I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that an officer of Washington’s rank would personally preside over an inquiry into a mere lieutenant’s sexual misconduct. If anything, Washington seems to have enthusiastically supported Enslin’s expulsion. His general orders for March 14, 1778 betray not the slightest hint of reluctance:

His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with Abhorrence and Detestation of such Infamous Crimes orders Lieutt. Enslin to be drummed out of Camp tomorrow morning by all the Drummers and Fifers in the Army never to return; The Drummers and Fifers to attend on the Grand Parade at Guard mounting for that Purpose.

Brownworth also suggests that “Washington signed the order for discharge more because the case involved fraternization below rank.” I wish she’d included some sort of citation for this statement, because I don’t see anything to substantiate it. The court-martial convicted Enslin of sodomy and perjury, not fraternization. The general orders quoted above make no mention of fraternization, and neither did Shilts in Conduct Unbecoming, at least as far as I could find.

Trotting out the rumors of Baron von Steuben’s homosexual dalliances and assuming that they were true, Brownworth then claims that the drillmaster, his assistant, Hamilton, and Laurens all constituted, in her words, “a gay foursome working directly with the leader of the Continental Army.”

Washington obviously considered morale in what was inarguably the most horrific battle station in U.S. military history, the winter at Valley Forge, needed to be upheld. Allowing men their one solace — each other — made sense from a general’s point of view. The less miserable the soldiers, the better they would fight. If keeping each other warm in the bone-crushing cold and abject misery (2,500 soldiers died at Valley Forge from starvation, disease and exposure) made life somewhat more bearable, then Washington had no issue with ignoring homosexuality in his ranks.

I repeat here what I stated with regard to the press release we examined two weeks ago: This whole thing is eerily reminiscent of the sort of historical shenanigans we’ve come to expect from Christian Nationalist writers. We get poorly-substantiated inferences presented as rock-solid facts, quotes taken out of their proper historical contexts, and elaborate reconstructions of prominent figures’ beliefs and attitudes based on the most precarious foundations. Still, I’ve got to admit that the idea of Washington willingly looking the other way while four members of his inner circle shacked up at Valley Forge sounds like an awesome premise for a sitcom.

3 responses to “Out and about at Valley Forge”

You’re far too kind to Ms. Brownworth’s train wreck of historical revisionism which ludicrously paints Washington as some kind of 18th century “male fag hag.” And, respectfully, you left out the even more damning statement by Shilts which contradicts her ignorant misrepresentation of what he wrote, emphasis mine: “The acceptance of General Steuben and his contributions to the fledgling American military DID NOT MEAN THERE WAS EVEN TACIT ACCEPTANCE OF HOMOSEXUALITY.”

The most one could say with any certainty was that it was simple pragmatism. Franklin and Washington NEEDED von Steuben and his “aides,” just as the WWII adjutant general who, per Allan Berube in “Coming Out Under Fire,” ordered the commanding general of the West Coast Air Corps Training Center in California to review the cases of some men ALREADY CONVICTED OF SODOMY “to determine their respective availability for military service” with “the view of conserving all available manpower for service in the Army.” He canceled the men’s dishonorable discharges and made them eligible for reassignment AFTER COMPLETING THEIR PRISON SENTENCES! And, just as in 1945, facing manpower shortages during the final European offensive in Europe, Secty of War, Harry Stimson, ordered a review of all gay discharges and ordered commanders to “salvage” homosexual soldiers for service whenever necessary. In every war since, our military has “looked the other way” whenever they’ve had greater needs for gay cannon fodder or expertise.

Enslin was simply like the countless gays over the years not saved by “stop loss.” And Brownworth is simply talking out of her ___ when she claims Enslin was “caught in flagrate.” But, with respect, you make the same mistake that she [and Shilts] did. Enslin was not found guilty of “sodomy” but only “attempted sodomy,” thus, far more likely explaining his more “lenient” sentence than Washington’s alleged fondess for The Gays. That charge could mean anything from attempted rape to mere solicitation for gay sex with no coercion [for which, e.g., members of the 1810 London “Vere Street Coterie,” habitues of one of the city’s infamous molly houses, were pilloried while two apparently caught in the act were hung]. At times, as molly house expert Rictor Norton has noted, “attempted sodomy” also merely referred to male same sex acts other than anal intercourse.

Finally, Ms. Brownworth crowned her cornucopia of nonsense by asserting something indisputably wrong—Alexander Hamilton may have been many things but he was never President of the United States.

Sadly, LGBT History Month has been turned into LGBT Wishful Thinking Month; an insult to academic research standards, and an orgy of balderdash by promoted by those presuming to be able to mind read the long dead. The gay community and its real history, both known and yet-to-be discovered, deserve better.

Where in the post did I say anything homophobic? All I did was explain why I don’t find the argument about Laurens and Hamilton persuasive. It’s not homophobic to doubt that somebody who died two centuries ago was gay.